New Tool: Usability ROI Calculator

May 13, 2009 — By Dr. Pete

Since I work with a lot of small businesses, one question I often hear is how to justify the price of a usability project (even a small one). It's a perfectly reasonable question. Of course, the short answer is that usability drives conversion and sales, but how much more sales, and how long will those benefits take to pay off the cost of a usability project?

To answer these questions, I've developed a usability ROI calculator, which calculates the potential impact of usability improvements on your website profits, as well as how long those additional profits will take to recoup the cost of a given usability project or consultation.

Let's say that your site gets about 10,000 visitors/month, 125 monthly sales, and your average profit margin is $25. Now, let's say you're considering a usability project that costs $950 (like our 5-Point Website Clinic).

You'd enter all of that into the calculator as shown above (the Usability Costs section is optional), and you'd get back something like this:

The table shows you your monthly and annual profit increases for 4 possible levels of post-usability sales increases (5%, 10%, 25%, 50%). It also shows your projected pay-off times. In this case, we see that the project will take somewhere between 0.6 months (just a couple of weeks) and 6.1 months to pay for itself.

Of course, the proof is in the pudding, as they say (although I have no idea why). Take the Usability ROI Calculator for a test-drive, and let me know what you think.